Application of Computers and Operations Research in the Mineral Industry –

Dessureault, Ganguli, Kecojevic & Dwyer (eds)

© 2005 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 04 1537 449 9

Haulage road design: a case study on surface mine in New Mexico

W. A. Wilkinson
Mincom Inc., Englewood, CO, USA

V. J. Kecojevic
Mining Engineering, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, USA

ABSTRACT: Haulage road design is an important element in the overall process of surface mine design. It
needs to ensure that both resource and waste material can be feasibly transported to its destination. While mine
haulage road design is similar to the civil road design projects, there are differences with respect to their design
criteria and in the materials used in their construction. This paper presents an approach and methodology in
the haulage road design process using the 3D CAD environment. A case study involving both coal and waste
haulage at the surface mine in New Mexico (USA) is used to demonstrate the advantages of using CAD tools to
create different design scenarios. The design process described in this paper is linear in nature and allows safe
and efficient road geometry while managing and incorporating the required design criteria.

1 INTRODUCTION design system, more efficiency is gained, particularly

The design process of haulage roads in surface mining
needs to consider several criteria.A detailed discussion
and guidelines for mine haul road design is given by
Tannant and Regensburg (2001). According to Thomp-
son and Visser (1999), an optimally safe and efficient
design can only be achieved when geometric design
principles are applied in conjunction with the optimal
structural, functional, and maintenance designs. Max-
imum grade, minimum turning radius and speed of
the equipment that will be utilizing the road should be
considered in the horizontal and vertical alignment.
Road cross section design should consider desirable
cross fall, super elevation, storm water structures such
as drainage ditches, and safety features required by
mining law (Walter et al, 1977). Side slopes for both
cut and fill conditions and any required benches on
the side slopes are important parts of the design that
also need to be considered. Balancing the cut and fill
requirements is a critical part. In addition to managing
all of the haulage road design criteria, several scenar-
ios and design iterations must be performed to explore
different options to derive an optimum solution. To
review a number of haulage road scenarios to decide
on an optimum design requires that each scenario be
performed quickly and efficiently. 3D CAD design
tools can be valuable tool in assisting the engineer in
completing the road design task in a relatively short
amount of time. Additionally, if the road design mod-
ule is integrated with the geologic modeling and mine
if the road design must incorporate coal roof or floor
surfaces. For the design of the haulage roads at the coal
surface mine in New Mexico, the Mincom MineScape
Haulage Roads product was used. Since this mine was
also using the Mincom MinScape Mine Planning Sys-
tem, integration with the geologic model and mine
plans was also achieved.
2 HAULAGE ROAD DESIGN METHODOLOGY
The methodology of creating a haulage road is a
generally a linear process. It includes the following ele-
ments: (i) Topographic data, (ii) Design criteria, (iii)
Road centerline and horizontal alignment, (iv) Verti-
cal alignment, (v) Road cross-section templates, (vi)
Road lines, (vii) Side slopes and benches, (viii) Trian-
gulated surface, (ix) Cross- sections, and (x) Cut and
fill volumes. Each of these elements is described as
follows:.
(i) Topographic data: Topographic data are usually
imported as ASCII X, Y and Z data, through digi-
tizing, or imported from DXF or DWG file formats.
For this road design project, topographic mine data
was imported as a DXF file. Topographic data were
updated two to three times per year and used for docu-
menting progress of the mine, mine plan versus actual
production reconciliation, and new mine planning.
Such data were first triangulated using the Delaunay
algorithm and the resulting triangles were then used to

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Copyright © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK

 create a grid surface. Grid surfaces were generally used
in the mine planning because of the large extent of the
active mine, and the improved computer performance
provided by grids when accessing large amounts of
data. When greater accuracy was required and the grid
cell effects did not provide the desired resolution, tri-
angulated surfaces were used. The topographic data,
triangles and grid surface are shown in Fig. 1.
(ii) Design criteria: Prior to any haulage road
design work, the road design criteria must be spec-
ified. These criteria would be minimum horizontal
curve radius, circular or spiral curve design, minimum
vertical curve length, side slope angles for cut and
fill conditions, bench widths, reference topography,
road station interval, road cross section templates, road
edge templates for cut and fill conditions, cross section
display, etc. Haulage roads at this truck and shovel coal
mine served two purposes, transporting spoil material
to the dump using 218 tonne trucks and/or hauling
coal to the stockpile using 290 tonne trucks. Roads
that were only used by the trucks hauling overburden
were designed at a maximum grade of 8%, while roads
that would accommodate the trucks transporting coal
were designed with a maximum grade of 6%. Road
surface widths were designed at 30 meters with a flat
cross-section. Crowned road cross-section and super
elevation were not generally incorporated into the road
designs. Road side slopes were designed at the mate-
rial angle of repose or 35 degrees for both cut and fill
Figure 1. Topography triangles and grid surface from line
data.
Figure 2. Road design criteria.
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Copyright © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
where the road was constructed entirely in disturbed
material. In the rare cases when the road cut would
occur in undisturbed areas, a side slope of 75 degrees
was utilized. No side slope benches were designed due
to the relatively short side slopes’ lengths required and
due to the limitations in available room in the pit areas.
In this case, safety berms equal to ½ half the height
of the truck wheels were required due to mine safety
law on roads constructed in fill conditions within the
mine area. It was generally beneficial if the road design
would required more fill than cut, as most road con-
struction was relatively close to the pit, and excess fill
material could be obtained through a short haul from
the highwall face that was being mined. Fig. 2 shows
the design criteria for the haulage roads.
(iii) Road centerline and horizontal alignment: The
horizontal alignment could be accomplished by either
entering each Intersection Point (IP), which defined
a road centerline, or by selecting an existing line in
CAD environment, which defined the road centerline.
An existing centerline could be obtained from a sur-
vey stakeout, in which a surveyor had mapped out
the best route. For the road design at the coal mine
in New Mexico, a centerline was drawn using topog-
raphy contours as a guide for its location. Once the
horizontal alignment was completed, automatic label-
ing of road stations and curves was accomplished to
provide a reference in the design and for final plots.
The horizontally aligned road centerline with station
labeling is shown in Fig. 3.
(iv) Vertical alignment: Once the horizontal align-
ment was completed, the centerline was draped on the
existing or reference topography; thereby, applying
existing elevation information to the design center-
line. For vertical curve design, it was best to view
the design in profile or section view, with the line
stretched out (i.e. no horizontal curve effects). Ver-
tical curves were applied by inserting vertical curve
vertices into a design line. Vertices could be inserted
by merely clicking a point in CAD, or by apply-
ing specific grades and curve length. The vertical
curve exercise was interactive, so the engineer was
able to make adjustments to achieve desired design.
User-defined information, such as road stationing,
 topography elevations, the design elevations, grade
information, difference between topography and the
design, and locations of horizontal curves, could also
be displayed in profile view. This information cou-
pled with interactive CAD tools enabled the engineer
to apply a precise vertical curve design. Once the
vertical curve design was completed, the design was
transferred back into its correct designed horizon-
tal alignment. Profile graphics could be updated to
reflect grade changes and also to provide road pro-
file details suitable for plotting. The road profile with
grade information is shown in Fig. 4.
(v) Road cross-section templates: Many of the
design criteria were kept in a specification and many
different specifications were created for different road
design conditions. Road cross-section templates and
road edge templates were kept as design file elements,
and were entered precisely through a template entry
form. One feature of Mincom MineScape that was
especially useful was that all specifications and tem-
plates could be made available to all projects in a
network. This saved time when designing roads in sev-
eral different projects, as templates and specifications
were always available without copying or recreating
them from project to project. Templates created in the
setup were applied to the horizontally and vertically
aligned roadway. Road cross-section templates for flat
and crowned road cross section were created as well

Figure 3. Horizontal alignment of haulage road with station labels.

Figure 4. Vertical alignment of haulage road with grade information.

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Copyright © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK

 as super elevation for curves. A cross fall of 2 cm per
meter was used when crowned or super elevation was
designed. The roads at the mine were 30 meters wide,
so the templates were created at 15 meters, or ½ half the
width of the road since the templates would be applied
to the road centerline. The road templates could be
applied to each station or curve marker interactively,
or applied to the whole road in an automated approach.
The application of templates, in most cases, was per-
formed automatically, thus shortening the amount of
time to complete the design.
(vi) Road lines: Once the road cross-section tem-
plates were applied, the road lines were created by
connecting the templates together to automatically
form the complete road design. Road edge templates
could optionally be applied and were applied based on
the road edge being above (fill) or below (cut) the ref-
erence topographic surface. Since safety berms were
required in fill areas, a safety berm edge template was
Figure 5. Road templates and road edge templates applied
to centerline.
Figure 6. Road surface created from design lines.
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Copyright © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
applied during this operation. A road generated using
road edge templates is shown in Fig. 5.
(vii) Side slopes and benches: The designed road
edge lines were projected to the reference topogra-
phy to tie the design into existing topography. Road
side slopes and bench widths were calculated during
this step in the process. As mentioned previously, no
benches were designed and the cut and fill side slopes
were generally at the angle of repose. The result of this
step was a collection of design lines, which defined the
road and how it tied into topography.
(viii) Triangulated surface: Surface generation
could utilize the design lines defining the complete
road with side slopes and benches or just only the road
to create a triangulation surface. This step provided the
surface for cross-section generation and volume cal-
culations. Road design lines and triangulated surface
are shown in Fig. 6
(ix) Cross-sections: Cross-sections of the road sur-
face were generated automatically at specified loca-
tions along the road. They were created at each station
and at the tangent points of curves. The section set up
allowed for the sections to be stacked and ready for
plotting.
(x) Cut and fill volumes: Cut and fill volumes for
the road designs could be calculated by either the
average end area method or by calculating volumes
between two surfaces. Cut and fill areas for each sec-
tion was performed and incremental and cumulative
volumes were calculated at each cross-section. Care
had to be taken that sufficient cross-sections were cre-
ated to provide adequate resolution for the existing
topography used to calculate an accurate cut and fill
volume. This was accomplished through specifying
 reasonable station intervals and including curve tan-
gent points in the cross-sections. For flat or nearly
flat topography, longer station intervals could be used
and with rapidly changing topography, station inter-
vals should be reduced. Cut and fill volumes were also
available through the calculation of volumes between
surfaces. The cut and fill volume calculated through
this method generated triangular shaped prisms, which
filled the road design aerial extent and extended in
depth from the road surface to the topographic surface.
The distance between the topographic surface and road
design surface was calculated for each prism at its cen-
troid. A volume for each prism was easily calculated
using the area of each triangle prism and the distance
from topography to the road design surface. Accumu-
lating the prisms resulted in a volume categorized by
cut and fills. Fig. 7 shows an example of haulage road
cross-section, and average end area volumes.
Once the design was completed, it had to be avail-
able to surveyors and field personnel in either elec-
tronic or paper plot format. Graphics created through
the design process were immediately available for plot-
ting, thus eliminating the need for spending lots of time
putting together plot-ready graphics. The user-defined
plots could be saved away as a specification and used
again in other road design projects. Additionally the
Figure 7. Cross-section showing haulage road average end area volumes.
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Copyright © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
design lines were available for export to the survey-
ors either though ASCII X, Y and Z format, Excel, or
DXF. An example of a plan and profile plot which was
given to the field engineer for construction is shown
in Fig. 8.
3 CONCLUSIONS
The design of haulage roads requires the management
of numerous safety and equipment limitation criteria,
while finding an optimum solution for the construc-
tion of coal and waste haulage. Proper design and
maintenance of haulage roads in any mine is critical
in providing uninterrupted transportation of resources
to meet the planned production. Road design is gen-
erally a linear process as described in this paper.
Leveraging 3D computer software, designed to accom-
plish the haulage road design task, allows for quick
generation of haul road designs, facilitating several
design scenarios quickly and efficiently, while man-
aging and incorporating the required design criteria.
Animation features can be used to simulate driving on
the designed road, thus providing the visualization of
any problems that might not be seen in a 2D design.
Should the haulage road design software be integrated
 Figure 8. Plan and profile plot of haulage road plans.
into the geologic modeling mine planning software,
haul road designs can easily reference the geologic
model and mine plans with minimal effort.
Numerous haul roads and ramps were designed
at the referenced truck shovel mine site utilizing the
Mincom MineScape Haulage Roads package. Several
scenarios and options were explored with each design.
A single haulage road design was performed in approx-
imately five minutes time or less, providing the ability
to explore multiple scenarios within a reasonable
amount of time.
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Copyright © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
REFERENCES
Tannant, D.D., Regensburg, B., 2001. Guidelines for mine
haul road design. University of Alberta, School of Mining
and Petroleum Engineering. p.116.
Thompson, R.J., Visser, A.T., 1999. Designing and man-
aging unpaved opencast mine haul roads for optimum
performance. SME Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado,
Preprint. pp. 99–90.
U.S. Department of the Interior, 1977. Design of surface mine
haulage roads – a manual. IC 8758, p. 49.